Obviously, with the work that the Rockstar North teams are doing between the creation of content for GTA Online, the content of Red Dead Online, and the development of GTA VI, there was little chance that a remaster could find a place. in this overloaded schedule. It is therefore Grove Street Games who found themselves at the helm of the project, and if the name of this studio already evokes GTA: San Andreas, it is not for nothing. Quite unknown on the market for big console and PC games, Grove Street has mainly made its mark on mobile, and has produced many ports of Rockstar hits. We owe them the Android and iOS versions of GTA 3, Max Payne, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas, GTA Chinatown Wars, Bully Anniversary Edition or even ARK Survival Evolved. As you have understood, this is therefore the first major project for this studio, which therefore had to manage to modernize a little bit titles that are around twenty years old, i.e. prehistory in video game terms. , especially since where 2D sprites retain their charms, we know that 3D ages particularly badly.
The three games were therefore more or less entitled to the same treatment, namely a good graphic facelift to bring them up to date, as well as some slight changes to modernize the gameplay. The advantage of using a modern graphics engine like the Unreal Engine is that titles work straight away with our modern screens, and even the latest Nvidia graphics cards if your PC has them. Exit games in 480p 25fps of the PS2, now each opus is compatible with ultra-wide set-ups. In our case, it will be 4K 144fps, partly thanks to the fact that these ancient titles do not require crazy equipment even in their new version, and partly thanks to the compatibility with the Nvidia DLSS supersampling system which is present . Say like that, it doesn't seem like much, but in reality, the mere fact of being able to have the game in a modern resolution is already a lot.
AH SHIT, HERE WE GO AGAIN
But that's not all, all the surfaces have been treated to smooth the edges, slightly erasing the "pile of polygons" effect of the beginnings of 3D. The textures have also progressed a lot, with, among other things, characters with a transfigured look, which are now much more cartoonish. It's not necessarily uglier, but it's clearly different, and it changes the aesthetics of the game quite a bit, especially during cutscenes. There are also incredibly more intense reflections on cars whose chromes are now really shiny. Nature is not to be outdone with a little denser vegetation, and volumetric tufts of grass which deform under the feet of CJ in the campaign of San Andreas for example. Again nothing amazing, but just restart the PS2 cake to realize that we were mainly entitled to green textures before.
Overall, the game remains visually dated, but we can still enjoy it without having bloody eyeballs, except perhaps when it rains at night, and the rendering is more like a blizzard in the Canadian north than a downpour. in Los Angeles. Without laughing, in this case, the visibility is so bad that the title becomes almost unplayable. There are also several visual bugs, often related to clouds or the weather, but nothing excessively unacceptable. Similarly, we will still be entitled to as much clipping in road traffic, while the increased display distance would have made it possible to make the cars appear much earlier. The gameplay itself also received a few touches of modernity. The most visible, and probably one of the most life-saving, concerns the arrival of a wheel of weapons which allows you to directly choose the gun of your choice. The elders still remember the ages spent pressing the slice buttons to scroll through the weapons one by one until you find the one you want.
WE GROVE FARM !
Several missions have been corrected and simplified in order to stick to modern standards (this motocross train chase with Big Smoke in San Andreas). Better, when you die during a mission, the game even offers us to try our luck again from an automatic save, and as a bonus, we do not lose our arsenal. Gunfights have also been tweaked slightly, with easier enemy locking, but nothing that really transcends experience. The feeling is still stiff and dated, but that's also part of the old-world charm, as real estate agents say. That said, the gain in fluidity provided by a framerate that can be left free is also a great help. It also transfigures the behavior that we rediscover in a new light, and which turns out to be stunning given the age of the games. Thanks to the work on the lighting, the night also allows for magnificent landscapes, whether it's the neon hues of Vice City, or the various environments of San Andreas, from the grimy streets of Los Santos to the illuminations of Las Venturas. 
We also note certain differences in content, with punchlines deemed too racist that have been dropped, while we imagine that rights issues have played on the composition of the tracklists (disappearance of Billie Jean from the soundtrack of Vice City) . Some easter eggs also seem to have been forgotten, including the ghost cars from the San Andreas campaign that are still present, but stand still. That said, not everything has been left out, since the Bridge Facts panel found in front of the San Fierro bridge (which details the number of polygons, or the disk space used by the latter) has been updated. day. We thus learn that this work of art has gone from 16 to 000 polygons, from 34 to 815 textures, or that the storage space occupied has greatly increased, going from 11 Mo to 40 Mo. Clearly, there will again be a lot of things to discover in these three legendary games thanks to this Definitive Edition.
